[kennyc]

By the time Chekhov died of tuberculosis at the age of forty-four, he had written, in addition to his plays, approximately six hundred short stories. He was also a medical doctor. He supervised the construction of clinics and schools, he was active in the Moscow Art Theater, he married the famous actress Olga Knipper, he visited the infamous prison on Sakhalin Island and wrote a book about that. Once, when someone asked him his method of composition, Chekhov picked up an ashtray.
“This is my method of composition,” he said. “Tomorrow I will write a story called ‘The Ashtray.’”
His letters are filled with revealing and immensely useful reflections on writing in general and, in particular, on the writer’s need for objectivity, the importance of seeing clearly, without judgment, certainly without prejudgment, the necessity that the writer be “an unbiased observer.”

- Francine Prose from Reading like a Writer Ch. 10

600 stories in say 30 years….. that’s an average of 20 per year…
…..Plus Everything else he did…..I think it was cause he didn’t have the internet.